Saturday, December 30, 2017

NY Times bets it all on admitted liar Papadopoulos, even trumpets as fact uncorroborated assertion that exists only in Papadopoulos' criminal plea bargain, ie that Russian Joseph Mifsud, a professor in Scotland, told him Russia had 'thousands of emails' of Hillary dirt. Mifsud himself denies knowing or discussing anything about emails. Mueller Oct. 30 court documents never state whether anyone in Trump campaign ever received this alleged Russian email news Papadopoulos claimed in his plea bargain about lying to FBI. None of Papadopoulos' many emails to Trump officials mention Russia having "thousands of emails"-Robert Parry, Consortium News

11/20/17, "The Lost Journalistic Standards of Russia-gate," Robert Parry, Consortium News"Exclusive: The Russia-gate hysteria has witnessed a
widespread collapse of journalistic standards as major U.S. news outlets
ignore rules about how to treat evidence in dispute, writes Robert
Parry."

Shane added, “the court documents describe in detailhow Mr.
Papadopoulos continued to report to senior campaign officials on his
efforts to arrange meetings with Russian officials, …the documents do
not say explicitly whether, and to whom, he passed on his most explosive discovery – that the Russians had what they considered compromising
emails on Mr. Trump’s opponent.
.“J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon official who worked for the Trump
campaign as a national security adviser [and who dealt directly with
Papadopoulos] said he had known nothing about Mr. Papadopoulos’
discovery that Russia had obtained Democratic emailsor of his prolonged
pursuit of meetings with Russians.”

Missing Corroboration

But the journalistic question is somewhat different: why does the
Times trust the uncorroborated assertion that Mifsud told Papadopoulos
about the emails— and trust the claim to such a degree that the
newspaper would treat it as flat fact?Absent corroborating evidence,
isn’t it just as likely (if not more likely) that Papadopoulos is
telling the prosecutors what he thinks they want to hear?

Further, since Papadopoulos was peppering the Trump campaign with
news about his Russian outreach in 2016, you might have expected that he
would include something about how helpful the Russians had been in
obtaining and publicizing the Democratic emails.

But none of Papadopoulos’s many emails to Trump campaign officials
about his Russian contacts (as cited by the prosecutors)mentioned the
hot news about “dirt” on Clinton or the Russians possessing “thousands
of emails.”This lack of back-up would normally raise serious doubts
about Papadopoulos’s claim, but – since Papadopoulos was claiming
something that the prosecutors and the Times wanted to believe –
reasonable skepticism was swept aside.

What the Times seems to have done is to accept a bald assertion by
Mueller’s prosecutors as sufficient basisfor jumping to the conclusion
that this disputed claim is undeniably true. But just because
Papadopoulos, a confessed liar, and these self-interested prosecutors
claim something is true doesn’t make it true.

Careful journalists would wonder, as Shane did, why Papadopoulos who
in 2016 was boasting of his Russian contacts to make himself appear more
valuable to the Trump campaign wouldn’t have informed someone about
this juicy tidbit of information, that the Russians possessed “thousands
of emails” on Clinton.

That is why reporters are usually careful to use words like “alleged”in dealing with prosecutors’ claims that someone is guilty. However, in
Russia-gate, all the usual standards of proof and logic have been
jettisoned. If something serves the narrative, no matter how dubious, it
is embraced by the U.S. mainstream media, which – for the past year –
has taken a lead role in the anti-Trump “Resistance.”"...